


The Taste of Freedom

by AJ_Lenoire



Series: The Taste of Life [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Flashback, Kinda mature but IDK just playing it safe, Nicknames, One Shot, Red Room, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 00:30:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3308975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AJ_Lenoire/pseuds/AJ_Lenoire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lookback over how Natalia Romanova came to earn the title of Black Widow, and how she came to perceive, befriend and later, love the man known as the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't really GOING anywhere, per se, it just popped into my head and I kinda liked it. Make of this what you will and all. Also, I know basically nothing about the Marvel Comics so take this with a pinch of salt.
> 
> Maybe I'll do a second part if I can be bothered. I originally planned one, but whatevs. Enjoy what actually exists of my writing.

**_2014 – Washington, DC, USA_ **

She watches as the man walks into the museum, seemingly so normal. No one knows he comes from another time, nor the inhuman gifts he possesses; so strong, so fast. But she knows, and she watches as he enters the building to read about his life, his war, and his friend he had thought was gone forever. Her hand comes to her chest, where only half her heart beats. Thanks to him. She watches and she waits, for her mission lies in his mind. And she always completes her missions. 

* * *

_Natalia Romanova._

_Black Widow._

_Natasha Romanov._

_Three sides of many sides of the same coin. Other sides are her numerous aliases, but the one that looms over them all, encompassing them all, is the Black Widow. The part of her that can kill a man in over one hundred different ways – and that’s just unarmed. The part of her that speaks over fifteen different languages fluently and flawlessly. The part that has been conditioned to act and live without emotion. The part that is slowly losing its hold over her._

_Years ago, when she was younger, but still older than she still looks, Natasha was very much the Widow, and the Widow was very much Natasha. A soldier had taught her all she knew, and she was as deadly as her name._

_But then came a hawk to kill her with its talons, and it gave her mercy. She was taken to its nest and treated like a guest, then an asset, then an equal. Now, a star. SHIELD’s most accomplished and highly-trained female operative. Of course, SHIELD didn’t give her much of her training. She helps a hero keep the peace, and even keeps some peace herself, delving into strange and foreign countries; teasing and killing cruel men like the deadly and beautiful creature she is._

_But now, in the twenty-first century, she is more of a girl. Still tougher than diamond and just as cutting, but she is kinder around people; the ones who have earned her trust and friendship, that is. She fits into disguises more, too. The Widow had been rigid, and no matter how much she tried to make herself pliable, fit into each role the Room had her play, it had been a thousand times harder than it was now, with friends backing her up, letting her know she was safe and she didn’t have to follow through with her teases._

_Which brings us to the first side as mentioned above. The girl who lived before the Widow._

_Natalia Romanova._

* * *

**_1949 – Classified Location, Russia_ **

The man who stood before her was a new face. Different from her normal instructors. She had already perfected every move they had thrown at her, every language they had given her. She was perfect. But she was not yet the Widow. That took more than training. More than exercises and juvenile competitions against her sisters.

No, the Widow was a title. And titles must be earned.

So that explained the man stood before her. He stood with a straight back and a steely gaze, but she could feel something off about his watch. Like it only went back so far. If you were to look deep enough into his eyes, you would find a blank wall where there shouldn’t be one. As though he didn’t have memories. One day, in many years’ time, she would know that look. She would see it in the mirror every day. And she would wonder. Wonder if her instructors knew. If they knew that she was aware that she had never _really_ been a ballerina? Never _really_ gone to school? That she had broken their wall? She wondered if they were aware that she remembered her childhood in the Room, that she knew she had been training since seven, not seventeen, no matter how many times they wiped her mind. The fire had burned their efforts away.

But that is a tale for another day. Back to the man with the wall in his eyes.

When he spoke, she could tell at a moment’s notice that Russian was not his first language. His pronunciation left something to be desired, and there was a faint trace of a foreign accent. She wondered what his first language was. He didn’t look German, or French, or English; but then again, so much of him was hidden that she couldn’t accurately say. The only piece of skin visible was the upper half of his face. The rest of him was covered. Then again, maybe he _was_ Russian, just simply out of practice. She could see a Soviet star on his left shoulder.

He looked at her, and frowned. This annoyed the girl. The instructors didn’t frown at her, not anymore. They didn’t smile either, but they didn’t _frown_. They were pleased with her progress. This man, for some reason, wasn’t. Then he blinked slowly, and the frown vanished. The girl was as perceptive as they came, but what use is perception without context? She didn’t know the kindness of the outside world, the lax attitudes of most people her age, nor of the war raging hundreds of miles away in a country she had never heard of called Vietnam. She didn’t understand the reason behind his disapproval.

That said, neither would he after that day. He would forget why he frowned at the little girl. He would forget why he thought it was wrong for her to be living and treated like this.

He would forget it entirely.

* * *

**_1947 – Classified Location, Russia_ **

She first saw him when she was eleven years old.

She was with the rest of her class, which had been shrinking day by day, as one by one the girls were eliminated, to leave only the top five. It was a few days before her twelfth birthday, before all their twelfth birthdays. Since their seventh – later she would realise that they had been lied to, that she had in fact been three months older than they had said – the girls had begun training, and the weaker ones had been taken away. Currently, there were fifteen from the original thirty. Within three years, two thirds of these girls would be dead.

But that only bothered her when she was out of class, when she saw friends and sisters, not competitors and rivals. In training, she focused on throwing the knives so they would stick in the board. She is one of the better ones, but she is not the best.

Just as she is lining up to take the next throw, she notices a glint of red and silver on her right, and turns to look at it. There he is. Through the observing window. Red star on his left shoulder, scanning the room with an unreadable expression. His eyebrow raises as he looks at Helena, who, whilst accomplished as much as any of the others, was failing miserably at this exercise. But for the most part, his face remained blank as the walls around them.

At least until his gaze comes to rest on her. The others had either not noticed or were ignoring her and him tactfully, focusing on the training exercise. But Natalia does no such thing. She is confused and entranced by this man, who is immediately so different from her instructors.

“ _Natalia!_ ” barks one of the instructors, and she stands to attention, ripping her gaze from the man’s. But she notices as she does this that his gaze does not leave her. She feels his lips curl into a smirk as she is reprimanded. She hates him.

“ _You are falling behind, Natalia._ ” He instructor told her in today’s language – which happened to be English – “ _Do you know what we do to girls that fall behind?_ ”

“ _They are eliminated_.” She answers, her own face now a blank slate, her tone expressionless. She is clay to be moulded by their orders. If they want her to throw knives, she will throw knives.

As she turns back to the board, she does not look for the man again. She is angry at him. One reprimand, that could be the difference between her elimination and her succeeding in training. She forces her gaze onto the targets and tries harder. She is better now, now that she has something more to prove.

She does not see the man raise his right arm and mutter quietly into an instructor’s ear as he points to her. She doesn’t see his lips carefully form the shape of her name as he tests it silently in his own mouth. She doesn’t see him watch a little while longer, then vanish from the observing room, without laying his eyes on any of the other girls after her.

The Widow would have seen, even if she wasn’t facing that direction.

But Natalia is not the Widow yet, she is only eleven years old. There will be time enough for that.

* * *

**_1949 – Classified Location, Russia_ **

She is still looking at him as he blinks and his face clears of the disapproval. This is the second time she has seen him, and the first up close. But it is not the second time he has seen her. He has been watching her, marking her progress. As the girls were whittled down, he concentrated his interest, at first from most of the lass, to half of it, and finally, her.

When she saw him for the first time that day, he had been choosing his apprentice. He only takes one apprentice at a time, and for a killer as famed and feared as he, it is a tremendous honour. She wonders why he chose her, when Jule was better at martial arts, when Sasha was more proficient at speaking English (whereas she could never _quite_ lose her accent). But he did not choose Jule or Sasha. In fact, neither of them made it through to the top five. She did. And he chose her.

“Well, Little Spider.” He said, and she heard his voice for the first time. It was gruff and stern, but not coldly detached like the voices of the instructors. If she had known what a father was supposed to sound like, she might have said he sounded like one. When he spoke, she stood to attention.

“Yes, Comrade?” she asked him, her hands clasped behind her, back straight, looking straight ahead instead of at his face.

“You will not address me as Comrade, Little Spider.” He told her. His first order. And a strange one at that. She nodded smartly, keeping her eyes fixed in the level point.

“Then what will I call you?” she asked him, still not meeting his eyes. She felt, rather than saw his lips twitch at a smile.

“That is for you to decide.” He replied, “You may call me what you wish, but until you have decided, call me nothing at all.”

* * *

First, when she is fourteen, he teaches her shooting.

He teaches her how to assemble a rifle.

The class was not allowed to learn this; thirty girls learning to shoot could result in madness if they decided to revolt, or lost control. Natalia knows they are speaking from experience. Training with anything more deadly than a knife only begins when the top of the class has been selected.

When she first manages to assemble it correctly, without any backtracks or mess-ups, she looks at him with a blank face. She doesn’t know if he will bark _again_ like he usually does, or point out an error. The answer she gets is one she did not expect.

“Well done, Little Spider.” That sounds like praise in his voice. But his face is still blank. “Now we learn to do it faster.”

She nodded silently and pulled the rifle apart, ready to start again.

* * *

Next, when she is fifteen, he perfects her martial arts.

He does this by practising with her.

As they spar on the mat, he educates her, and she listens as she tries to fell a blow. “Mercy is a weakness.” He tells her, “If you give mercy, you are weak. But also, you are thinking your opponent is weak. If you _get_ mercy, then you have failed in your mission.”

“But I have succeeded in deceiving them.” She points out as she fights. He has not managed to land many blows to her; she is smaller and faster, though he is faster than he seems, too. “I have made them think I am weak. I can strike whilst their guard is down.”

“You should not need to do this, Little Spider.” He reminds her, “The Widow would never get captured, would never _need_ to fool those into thinking she is weak. Weak is not the same as delicate. Spiders are delicate, but they are not weak.”

As he says this, he manages to catch her. As she extends a hand to cause a blow to his chest, he catches it with his left arm. She feels the black leather of his glove close around her wrist and she knows she has lost, but it doesn’t stop her from fighting until she is on her back, and he has his right hand balled up in the front of her shirt and his left arm drawn back, fisted for a blow. She closes her eyes, but the blow never comes. She feels his weight come off of her, and she opens her eyes. He has stood, and he is brushing himself down. Once he has dusted the grime from the training floor of the leather of his left sleeve, he extends his right hand, and pulls her up.

“You said mercy is for the weak.” She told him, “I should consider myself insulted that you gave me that dishonour.”

He laughs. A strange sound for the young girl, who has never heard a man laugh before. The only laughs had been those of her sisters, and there is little of that now. The laughing ones are the carefree ones, and the carefree ones are usually not good enough to make the cut. She has not heard _anyone_ laugh for two years. But she smiles, because she had forgotten how infectious a laugh’s joy can be.

“I am your trainer, Little Spider.” He reminds her, “My job is to make you a better killer, not to _be_ your killer. He assumes a battle stance, “Now.” He says, getting back to business, “Again.”

As she assumes a stance of her own, she smiles. She has finally decided what to call him.

“What is your name?” she asks him. He smiles. For the first time, he smiles approvingly. He had never done that before, not even when she assembled her rifle perfectly.

“You can call me James, Little Spider.”

Only he doesn’t call her Little Spider again. From then on, she was Natalia.

* * *

Next, when she is sixteen, he teaches her how to kill.

He shows her on the whimpering, quivering man just where to cut to assure a quick and definite death. He teaches her how to silence a man, how to know which torture would be most effective, and how to leave no evidence that she was the one who killed them.

The first person she kills for him is a forty-year-old man who liked children. In a bad way, James told her, but said no more. She killed him like he had shown her. He was pleased.

The second person she kills for him is a young, handsome drug dealer that a rich democrat wanted dead. The democrat hired the Red Room, and they brought him in. Natalia made sure the contract was fulfilled. He was pleased.

The third person she killed for him was a person she had thought dead for a while; Six. The girl who placed sixth in the Black Widow initiative. She had been kept alive for Natalia to practice on. She killed her without question. She said nothing when she noticed the sadness behind the wall in James’ eyes. She did it perfectly, but he was not pleased. She pretended not to notice when he praised her.

It was not the first time she had killed one of her sisters. But it was the first time they'd never had a chance to fight back.

* * *

**_1954 – Classified Location, Russia_ **

She is eighteen when he begins the new lessons.

They start off light-heartedly, for the Red Room. James shows her to a wardrobe, and it is not filled with normal clothing. She wears black shirts and trousers, as does he. The only difference to his clothing is the red Soviet Star on his left shoulder. She expects it is personal to him, because none of the other instructors wear such stars. Some of them wear symbols, some shoulders are marked, but only the right ones, with what she would guess as a red octopus, if she knew what octopi were. But the wardrobe is not filled with his clothing either. It is filled with evening dresses.

“What are these for?” she asks him. He looks at her and does not answer immediately. Once more she notices the wall, the memories that only go back so far.

“Choose one.” Is his only answer. She is a student of the Red Room, trained to follow orders without question or hesitation. But even as the prized student she would question this action if an instructor ordered her to, because this is so different, such a new and strange form of attack. But she does not question James. Because she trusts him. She knows she shouldn’t, and that it could get her killed – most likely by his own hands – but she trusts him.

So she picks.

He teaches her how to behave around targets, how to deceive them into thinking she is delicate and innocent. He tells her how to read body language as though it is words on a page, and how to respond. He tells her how to detect what a target would want – a friend, a business partner, a lover. All these and more, and she moulds herself to these roles, slips on disguises as fluidly as the clothing she wears, and discards them just as easily. She can tell he is proud of her, but she does not understand the sadness behind the wall. The wall that, as she spends more time with him, begins to crack.

She sees him once a week for a two hour session, but never, _ever_ any time else. She has an exquisite memory, and so must he, but he remembers such simple and finite details that she cannot understand how he recalls them with such ease, as though the previous session was only minutes ago.

It is then that she notices he has not changed.

She has aged nearly eight years, and he has aged perhaps eight months. She wants to ask him why, but feels it is out of place.

So she stays silent.

* * *

**_1955 – Classified Location, Russia_ **

He sees her on her nineteenth birthday, but not as a cause for celebration.

“You looks well, Natalia.” He says by way of greeting. She stands, in standard uniform, hands clasped behind her back. She inclines her head in her own version of greeting. However friendly he may be to her, he is still her instructor, and this is still the Red Room.

“Are you prepared for today’s session?” he asks her, and she nods. She looks forward to the sessions now. There is less of a drill element, and she feels a thirst for the knowledge he gives her. She loves body language the most, loves reading it and falsifying her own. She practices on the other four girls at night, watches them discreetly as they read or sleep. She has become so trained that even they, her former-competitors, have no idea they are being observed.

“This one will be a little different.” He tells her, and extends his left arm. He turns and walks to follow where he was pointing, and she follows him in silence. He leads her down one of the many identical corridors to a room. But this is not the normal corridor, and it is not the normal room. She can see the door to the observing room next to it. But instead of everting the observation room, he goes into the first room, and she follows without question.

Inside the room is white. Completely and starkly white. There is a single chair in the center of the room, and it would have reminded Natalia of a dentist if she’d ever been to one. All her physical and medical examinations are taken by the same doctor every six months. She is perfectly healthy, of course. If she wasn’t, she would have been eliminated.

She then notices that the chair has straps. Four of them. One for each of a person’s forearms and upper arms. James stops by the chair and stands like she usually does; back straight, hands behind his back. Natalia turns to look behind her. Instead of a window is a two-way mirror. The observation room can see her, but she can’t see them.

“What is today’s session?” she asks him. She never calls him James if they are not alone. It feels too personal. He seems to understand, as he has never pressed the issue. Once more, as she asks the question, she sees the sadness behind the wall. But it is gone before she can truly read it with the skills he has taught her. It always goes too quickly.

“Sit down in the chair.” He tells her, and she does so with no protest or question. Not because it is him, because it is different when they are not alone, and she knows they are not. She does so because if her instructors had seen what her time with James – what her time away from _them_ – had done – allowed her to begin questioning – they might eliminate her. Prized student or no, questions were deadly.

She lies back in the chair and he straps her arms in place. Feeling both of his hands on her skin – or at least, his gloves – she realises that his left hand is much cooler than his right. She wonders why this is, but it is not important right now.

The Red Room has cured her of fear, but not of nervousness. In some ways, that is worse, because it is like she is about to throw up. She is very nervous, and she does not know what is going on. That will always be one of her fears; not knowing.

Once she is strapped in place, James leaves the room without a word, but she can sense him in the observation room, feel his gaze upon her. She somehow manages to find his eyes through the mirrored glass, and stares into them even if she cannot see them.

Then comes the fire.

* * *

Fire. Burning scorching roasting toasting flaming its way up and down her body, filling every nerve with heat and light and flame. She knows she is screaming but she does not care, the pain is too intense for caring. How long has she been screaming? Her throat is red raw, it must have been minutes, but it felt like years.

It was just a needle prick, a single needle prick in her arm to ignite the flame, but it was striking a match and throwing it into an oil drum. The most intense pain is in her abdomen, as though someone has stuffed their hand into her lower stomach and ripped out whatever was in there. Under that are the tiny insistent pains up and down her arms and legs, as though someone it repeatedly stabbing the skin with a long needle. The smallest pain, but still agony in its own right, is in her head, beating at her right temple like a drum. Memories she never knew she had now come to the surface. The fire is lighting all those memories, calling them forth.

Under all the agony, she realises that these memories make no sense. There is nothing about being a ballerina. Nothing about having a family, or a hospital fire, either. Al she sees is the Red Room. She sees a dark and dingy laboratory, like this one, and once more she is in the chair. _Wipe her_ commands a voice, and she feels pain within the pain, and it melts into the rage of the fire of now. It makes no sense, and it surely cannot have happened. But these images are too perfect to be lies. She remembers the wall behind James’ eyes, and the sadness behind her own. Now she realises that she could see the wall because she had one of her own, she just hadn’t known it then. This fire was burning away the wall before it killed her.

Then, mercifully, blessedly, the fire is quelled. She is scorched red raw and smouldering, but she is alive. The fire burned away the wall, but left her. James comes into the room, and Natalia’s vision is hazy with pain. He puts a hand on her red curls and strokes comfortingly, murmuring soothing endearments in Russian.

“You are doing well, Natalia.” He says, but she knows it’s not real, that it’s only a hallucination, because the fire starts up again and he is gone, because the burning continues and there is no one to stroke her hair.

Because the James she knows does not have a metal arm.

* * *

One week after her birthday, the fire cools completely. After three brief pauses, in which her metallic friend came to visit with sweet nothings conjured by her own mind. One week of the hell that felt like years and a moment all at once. One week, then Natalia walks out of the room.

She goes to her session with James, and he is sat there, looking apologetic and humble. She starts to see the man behind the Winter Soldier name. The man who calls himself James. She starts to see James. The fire burned away her wall, and it lit up others’ walls too. Now she can see behind his wall more clearly. And all she finds is sadness, and another wall. But this is not one of his design. This one is more like hers; one put there by the Red Room, whose presence is forgotten when it is noticed, whose reality is never questioned. He has been tweaked in the mind like she has.

 _Wipe her_. Says the voice again, and the blinding pain, and the light. Perhaps that is what they did to him. Perhaps this second wall, this Red wall, is a way of keeping him in check. She now realises that, even if he does have more authority, he is as much a prisoner and experiment as she is.

“You did well.” He says by way of greeting,

“But what did I do?” she asks him, “All I remember is fire.”

“You survived.” He answers, “You are the first student to do so.”

“What did I survive?” Questions may be dangerous, but she survived the fire. Now she can survive anything.

“Serum.” Is his ambiguous reply, “Something to help your training.”

And this was true, for the most part. Natalia found her stamina and strength were much more than before, that her vision and hearing were more acute, her reflexes faster. But over the coming months, with each passing session, she began to notice more and more.

She noticed that the other girls sometimes had red stains on their bedsheets when they woke in the mornings. She never did. The other girls were provided with razors by the instructors, but she never was. The other girls were taken to the medical room, and would later talk of efficiency, but she never knew what they meant. The other girls sometimes got colds or coughs, but she never did. When they cut themselves on knives or got bruises during training, the injuries were still there the next day. Natalia’s never were.

* * *

She finally posed this question to him. Six months after the fire.

“No other student has survived the serum.” He tells her, “So we only use one student from every class. That student was you.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” She replies. He sighs.

“These new lessons,” he begins, “Are lessons in tricking men to obeying you. You will have noticed the serum did...things to your body?” When she nodded, he continued, “This will aid you in your missions.”

It is clear he does not want to talk about it, so she presses the issue no further. She merely continued the lessons, and finds that she can remember things a lot more easily. No doubt thanks to the serum. Maybe this is why James always remembers things so clearly between sessions.

She doesn’t know it yet, but she is wrong. She fails to notice the ice in his messy hair.

* * *

Nine months after the fire, she speaks to him of her hallucination.

“You had hallucinations?” his brow furrows with something that might look like concern, if Natalia had ever seen concern before. She reads it as disapproval, and hesitates.

“...Yes.” she eventually admits, and when he presses for details, she gives them to him. No doubt he is worried that the Red Room’s star student could burn away entirely if she is not examined thoroughly.

So she tells him of his kind words, and how he stroked her hair, and how she knew it was a hallucination because his arm was silver and not black. When she is done, he nods smartly and dismisses her for the week. He says that it was indeed just a hallucination, but nothing she should be worried about.

That is when Natalia knows how far she is coming in her lessons. She has obviously been improving; she has been fulfilling the Room's contracts for five years. But for the first time, she can tell. Or maybe she has always been able to tell, he has simply never done it before. But, either way, she sees. She sees, clear as the Soviet Star stamped on the black fabric of his shoulder, that James was lying to her.

One week after her twenty, James takes her back to the room, and they give her the fire again. They promise, however, that this will be the last time, and that it will be no worse than before.

But that does not make it any less awful.

* * *

Three days after the second fire, she has her first lesson with James since turning twenty.

“You look well, Natalia.” He tells her in greeting. She smiles,

“And you too, James.” She replies. It has been a while since the name rolled off her tongue, and she regrets that. It sounds so wonderful. He smiles at her, and gestures to the table in the room.

The room in which she has been having her special lessons has always resembled a medieval bedchamber. It is high and stone and has a charming rustic quality to it. There is a large wooden wardrobe and a large wooden table with matching chairs. Tapestries hang on the walls and curtains hang from the bedposts. For the first time, James is sitting on the bed when she arrives. But he soon moves to sit like he normally does, at the table.

“Before we move on,” he says, and she senses something different. He has never felt the need to review before. She had never needed to review. He is stalling. “Let’s just take a moment to review, hmm?” She nods, and rearranges her face in the way she always done. Blank and expressionless, a canvas to be painted.

“Rich British man.” James begins, “Has an ex-wife, and runs a drug circle.” As he lists details about this pretend man, Natalia styles herself in her mind. Someone exotic and mysterious, someone who finds him fascinating as his ex-wife probably no longer will. She builds in her mind the perfect partner for this man, and slips into this partner’s skin, ready to _become_ her, to get what she wants, which would be this man’s throat gaping open in a bloody smile, and all of his secrets instilled in her modified memory.

When she relays these details to James, he smiles in approval. “You have done well, Natalia.” He tells her, and then he speaks of the final skill she will learn. She can see he is preventing a frown, and she is cast back to a memory that she thought the Red Room had stolen from her. Now she remembers those yearly sessions, where she wakes up, confused, and the instructors tell her nothing, only ask her to throw a knife, or shoot a gun, or speak a language. And she does, and they are pleased, and nothing more is said. Her body remembered and saved what her mind could not; the languages, those moves, and it also remembered the truth.

Before, she had thought herself a young prodigy in being a ballerina. The Red Room had been her trainers to keep her in top condition, and to keep her safe. They taught her languages so she could understand her adoring fans, taught her self-defence as both dance and protection. She had never questioned to them or to herself why she had never performed. She had never questioned why she had never been outside. The wall had been turning her away so subtly that she hadn’t even realised it was turning her away in the first place. It had made her forget her dead sisters, the men she had killed, the tortures she had undergone even as she was enduring them. But the fire had burned the wall away. The Red Room had turned its own star student into its own fatal flaw. Because one day, even if she didn’t know it yet, Natalia Romanova would bring down the Red Room.

“You know how to fool a man into taking you away in private,” James said, drawing her from her thoughts, and she still sees the wall in his eyes, but says nothing. “But often that is not enough. It takes more than a pretty face to make a man’s guard come down. And usually, you will have to take down more than his guard if you are to get what you want.”

She is not allowed to ask questions, but at this she does not follow. She opens her mouth to question him, but finds the words never leave her throat. Before they can escape, she is otherwise occupied. She didn’t know what he meant until now. She didn’t know what that meant until she felt his lips against hers.

Natalia would be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about him like this. Hadn’t imagined what he looked like under the thick black fabric of his uniform, what he smelled like, tasted like, felt like. As she had grown older, she had seen more of him. She realised now he was older than she had originally thought, perhaps twenty eight. But the fact remained that he had barely aged since she'd first seen him, even after all these years. And she was newly twenty. Even the Red Room could not do away with the curiosity of a young girl when around an attractive man.

His touch is soft and gentle, he tastes sweet and she can feel the man he was, before the Winter Soldier, just like Natalia Romanova is the woman she would be before she finally gains the title of the Black Widow. She can feel a strong friend, a kind man, a carefree boy. So different from her James, and yet, so similar. She feels like his eyes were merely the windows to behind the wall. Whether or not his mind remembers, whether or not his own mind-wall has burned away, his lips have no such barrier.

But soon after, she pulls back, confused. She sees the hurt and apology in his eyes, but she does not blame him. What just happened – whatever it was – was wonderful. But she needs to know why and what. She hates not knowing. She needs to know.

So she tells him.

At first, he does not reply. He dismisses it. But then he tells her.

“A touch or a promise is not enough.” He tells her. “If you are to become the Black Widow, you must be as the spider. In all ways.”

Now she understood what he meant. A black widow spider killed males only after mating with them. She felt a horrible taste in her mouth but quelled it. She called to mind a horrible word but did not say it. Rusty from disuse, she doesn’t know when or where she first heard it, but it comes to her now.

 _Whore_.

It’s a disgusting word. An awful, ugly word. But it fits. Despite her training to not showcase her emotions, her mouth twists and she takes a step back. She sees the pain in his eyes. Clearly, he likes the arrangement no more than she does.

“I’m sorry, Natalia.” He says, and she feels as though he means it, “I’m sorry.”

She said nothing, only thinking of recent developments. The other girls...more recently, there had been something off. Something... broken about them. They flinched if someone made too sudden a move. But only in front of each other. Never in front of the instructors, even if she, with her body language, could see the fear in their eyes. She could also see their walls. The walls they had yet to question. The walls they may never question. But they were starting, just on the very tip, of that edge now. She could see it.

“They...” she muttered, “The others... the instructors... They...” she felt her breathing speed up and awful panic, nervousness, nothing as empowering as fear, which made the horror all the more real. Then she realised it was not just panic, but anger. A fury so potent she wondered from where it had come. She felt it rise up in her body and consume her, and when James made to touch her she lashed out and yelled at him, swinging blindly at the arm he had outstretched to her.

She felt the fabric of his uniform as she hit him, as though her mind was breaking down the sensation into slow motion. She felt something soft underneath. Flesh, perhaps? But no, it was too soft, not firm and muscular, like he should be. Then, under a too-thin layer of the not-flesh, she felt her fist connect with something too solid and too cool to be an arm, and too bulky to be a bone.

She leapt back. Damn her training, damn the Red Room. The fire had burned away the wall and she had a mind of her own. She was either hallucinating now or she hadn’t been hallucinating in the fire, because she had felt it. The thin padding was a poor attempt to hide it, but his arm, his left arm, just like she had imagined, was metal.

Demanding answers, she ripped the fabric of his sleeve, and she was prepared to fight him for these answers. Only he didn’t fight. He stood there, head bowed, eyes half-closed, not daring to meet her gaze.

“I knew you lied.” She said bluntly, and he looks up, for a moment panicked, and she continues, “About the hallucination. I just didn’t realise you lied about _this_.” For now she saw it, glittering silver in place of pale skin, solid metal in place of flesh and muscle and bone. And, on his shoulder, in the same place as all the stamps and patches sewn and inked onto his black uniforms, a red Soviet star.

He holds it awkwardly, and when she approaches him, he pulls it back, as though ashamed of it. He steps back several paces and sits on the bed, far away from where she is still stood by the table, where he had kissed her. Now she feels guilty, for it was not his fault he had kissed her. And she apologised as best she could, by approaching him too quickly for him to move away, and taking the arm in both of her hands.

It was not as cold as she would have expected, as though some of his body heat was transferred into it. When she experimented, touching his wrist lightly to see if it tickled, the metal acted as though it were a real arm, with real reflexes. It had no pulse, and he could most likely not feel pain with it, but she was willing to bet he could still feel.

She raised the hand to her lips and kissed it gently. A silent apology, a silent promise. She was not scared by him or his arm, because she’d never been scared of him before. She had only been surprised. But she is not now. For this is what the Red Room does. In one way or another it robs you of your humanity. She was just lucky enough to have won some of it back with his help.

“Natalia...” he said softly, but he said no more. What was there to say? So much and so little, and nothing that even they, with their advanced grasp of so many languages, could ever hope to verbalise.

But in the end, there was nothing to say, and they did what had to be done. But even without words, both of them knew that they didn’t do it for the Red Room. When she kissed him, she kissed him because she wanted to and she liked it and he did too. When he touched her, it was because she wanted to be touched and he wanted to feel her skin. When they fell apart, it was because they trusted each other and it was together.

When they fell asleep together under the heavy cover of the old-fashioned bed, it was not as two assets in a lesson, but two caged lovers finding their first taste of freedom.

As they begin to drift, she lies on her side, and she is looking into the darkness. He is behind her, also on his side, and she can feel his metal arm slide over her, as she lies on his real one. But she hugs the warming metal to her abdomen and holds it there. She thinks how vulnerable she feels, and how he seems, right now.

“I thought you said the Widow would never need to fool people into thinking she is weak.” She murmurs. “This feels weak.” She feels his hand flex against her stomach. _Weak_ does not apply to his metal arm, even if he wanted.

“This is not weakness, Natalia.” He tells her, and he leans back. His concern – now she knows what it is – seems genuine. He does not want to hurt her, he didn’t before, and he doesn’t now. She knows all too well that the other instructors would not pay her such a kindness. She wonders why he is different. She thanks a god she doesn't believe in that he is. “This is acting. You are playing the part of a gentle young woman. And when the man is fooled, you strike like a Black Widow. Quickly and fatally.”

She does not need to hear any more. She turns her head to face him and accepts the next kiss. For her, this is no act. And he cannot lie to her, he is too truthful by nature. It is no act for him either. She allows herself to wonder for the breifest moment, how someone so truthful became part of the Room. But then she remembers how she arrived. She had no choice. Perhaps he, too, was stolen away as a child. But either way, he did not choose the Blood Red Room.

It is not what she has learned in general lessons. She is the only one of the five going this far into training. The others will simply perfect what they have already learned; they were simply being “broken in” as she will later hear in passing by other instructors. She alone comes back to James’ arms once a week, and she alone tastes freedom. They will become master assassins, but she alone will earn the title of the Black Widow. They will be the Room’s slaves, but she alone will break free of the blood-red chains and tear the Room down if it is the last thing she does.

* * *

**_1957 – Classified Location, Russia_ **

Three weeks before her twenty-first birthday, there is a change in the dynamic.

Three weeks before her twenty-first birthday, she is told that she will be going outside. On a mission 

Three weeks before her twenty-first birthday, she stops tasting freedom.

Three weeks before her twenty-first birthday are three weeks she does not see James at all.

* * *

When she does see him, just before they leave for the mission, he looks different. And after little perusing she can guess that one of the instructors talked to him or did something because he is more careful now. Or maybe it is because she is going outside. It has been just over a year since she killed a man, and though she remembers everything, her knife begs for fresh blood.

The mission is simple, kill the named man and procure his secrets. It's significant because for the first time she needs the knowledge of those special lessons. This isn't waiting on a building with a rifle and crimps shaoer. This isn't a helpless lump tied to a chair and a knife in her hand.

She poses as a beautiful, young British woman who speaks so little Russian, but throws herself on the aging man, and more than once she has to fight to keep the red, shiny smile in place and resist the urge to cross her arms over her shockingly low-cut dress that is something called “candy-apple red” but she doesn’t know what a candy-apple is and all she knows is she feels like her bosom is trying to jump out of the fabric and she aches for the black, formfitting synthetic uniform of the Room that covers her from wrist to ankle to throat and come with black boots that are _so_ much easier to walk in than these shoes. It is one thing to dress up in the lessons with James, and walk around for an hour or so. It is another to manoeuvre an entire mission – including completing the mission – whilst dressed so awkwardly.

She doesn't have to worry about that for long, he takes great pleasure in undressing her. She forces herself not to shudder, and tries to think of James to calm herself. But James' hands were never so clammy, he wasn't so demanding and quick and tactless, just touching and grabbing for his own enjoyment. This man is, and it makes her pleasure all the sweeter to drag a blade through the pipe of his throat and watch his fading gaze as she stands over him, immovable and absolute as though she is a vengeful angel.

But either way, the mission goes well and the man is dealt with; left with a red smile on his throat and the finger-print-less murder weapon in his hand. When she returns to the Red Room with the file they asked for she is dismissed with a terse “good” and that is that.

Aside from James.

James who was standing by in a tuxedo and tactfully-thick white gloves, watching the man’s every move and making sure that she is in no danger, ready to complete the mission. He consoled her on that night after the mission but before their return home, when she lay huddled on her bed and adjusted to the first instance of what she knew would be a repeat offence. She tries to steel herself but only remembers the violation she felt. He is reluctant when she asks, but does so anyway because he still wants to, and she honestly, honestly wants to, and she needs to forget what the dead man was like and replace those memories of his touching her with memories of James.

They keep James behind after dismissing her, and she can hear them ask why he was so concerned, and when he replies it is because she is the Widow protégé, that is not good enough. But she thanks him silently in her head for caring. No one else did.

Another month goes by without James, she only sees him again when they line up another mission. And when she sees him again, he breaks her heart.

* * *

“James.” She smiles more than she ever does in this facility. Once more her knife begs for blood, but not one of the Red Room’s pet peeves. For the Red Room itself. She wonders, will the Room bleed red for its name? She will slit every throat in the building if that is what it takes to conclusively find out. And if that is not what it takes, well, she will do it anyway.

“Romanov.” He says, almost a question, and she feels the need to nod. She is confused as to why he uses her surname, but says nothing in the presence of the instructors. She tells him on the mission they have been assigned, another thing to occupy her and her knife, and he nods. She asks if their private lessons will resume at all, and he looks at her with such confusion she knows he isn’t lying or acting. When she asks the Room formally if she will be training with the others or with "Comrade Soldat" or if she is to be left to her own devices, they tell her she will simply have to log seven hours’ training a day when she does not have missions.

Her assignments afterwards usually take three days, and she often gets two days’ “rest” between each one. She spends her days wondering why James will not talk to her unless he has to any more, and why, when they go on missions, he is exactly the same. She wonders why he never starts anything, when before, they both seemed to enjoy is as much as it was necessary. She wonders why that when he has to touch her, it feels just as repulsive as the touches of her targets. He looks at her like a colleague, like a stranger.

And one day he asks _what is your first name again?_ But not as if he cares, as if he is trying to remember and the fact he can't is irritating. Even when she tells him, forcing harder than ever not to let a tremor enter her voice, he still only calls her Romanov, and still only talks if he must.

And later she will swear she heard and felt her heart crack in two. That one half left as he did, when he walked away after they completed that first mission, never suggested they do anything; spar, talk, train. Leaving her with only half a heart and a mind full of questions she is forbidden to ask and he cannot answer.

It is not until many years later that she understands he can't answer, rather than won't. It is not until many years later she will see the scars on his flesh where a simple mind wipe was not enough to condition his indifference to her.

It is not until many years later that she will realise he was crying out to her from inside his own body.

* * *

When she earns the title Black Widow, only a few months after that mission, he has nothing to say other than he is glad the time and effort was not wasted. And she realises that James is gone, all that is left is the Red Room's soldier. She finds herself sickened by the creature that looks like James but isn't. She cannot look at him. _I_ _t_. She carries on with half a heart, and he is still in possession even if he doesn't care (he does) or doesn't know (he doesn't) and whether Natalia liked it (sort of). Even later, when she befriended and even trusted the hawk and the Captain, the soldier was always in sole possession of her heart.

When she breaks out of the Red Room at age twenty-three, becoming a freelance assassin, she hears rumours of the Black Widow program being terminated. She hears rumours about a mysterious Winter Soldier in only the darkest, most covert of circles, and his name is always a hushed whisper, and few believe his existence. She does not correct them, because she doesn't want to breathe more life into something she so dearly wants dead and gone. The Red Room disclosed his codename to her, but she had thought him gone with the rest — terminated because he was an asset like her, he was expendable like her. She very quickly learns that this Winter Soldier is no new imposter, just the shadow of James.

When she breaks the Red Room down to less than its foundations, and stands in the rubble with a bloody knife and an empty magazine, she feels nothing, only noting that none of her kills (not victims. 'Victims' implied they hadn't deserved it) had metal arms. The Winter Soldier is the last brick of the Red Room and he must be destroyed. Once he could have been saved, when James existed too, but now James was gone. She knows this now, and she knows it even more in the coming decades, when he shoots her without even blinking, when once he was reluctant to even touch her without her consent. When he goes by the Winter Soldier instead of James or nothing at all.

* * *

**_2014 – New York City, NY, USA_ **

When she encounters him decades later, both working for new organisations, her with a hundred new names, now saving the world and wiping her ledger, now with friends and a particular one that she trusts more than anyone ever. She has never asked him for love, not even on those days when it seems all you can do to make the pain leave, even if only for a moment, is to drive it away with beds and sweat. She values his friendship, but never asked for his love, for his love is not what she wants.

She never thought she would find someone she would trust like that, especially since the only other person who came close was stolen from her. But she finds a close friend and ally in the hawk with the talons sent to kill her, and he too finds one in her. They become an inseparable team, one of the best SHIELD has to offer. And then came another friend, with a different past but a similar story, and one very strange metal-armed connection that neither of them knew about. And she finds she trusts him too, and she finds that she has at least two friends in this world, even if she will never have love with her half-heart.

But nothing other than that has changed, and she realises two things about her old friend, who she now calls the Soldier. That she could never bring herself to kill him, and that James was never really gone. Only locked away. And she vows to coax him out once more. She owes him that much, and he deserves that much, and perhaps, maybe, if god does exist and there is such a thing as luck, he will still love her, and they will be able to taste freedom again. And if he can taste freedom, then the Soldier will be gone for good. With no Red Room to bring the Soldier back, he will fade, and the Red Room will truly, once and for all, fall into ash and dust.

When she still looks twenty-five but is over forty in reality, she sets herself a new mission other than destroy the Red Room. She sets herself a mission to taste freedom. She sets herself a mission to make the Winter Soldier taste freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> So, after a few days' mulling a sequel is considerably more likely, but I make no promises because I burn out on my projects shockingly easily. This story came to me from a combination of things, mostly other fics, and a desire to see the Black Widow/Winter Soldier relationship (which is very, VERY canon in the comics if not the movies).


End file.
